AfricaBib 
bibliographic database
| Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | Narrative, History, Novel: Intertextuality in the Historical Novels of Ayi Kwei Armah and Yvonne Vera |
| Author: | Wilson-Tagoe, Nana |
| Year: | 1999 |
| Periodical: | Journal of African Cultural Studies |
| Volume: | 12 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Period: | December |
| Pages: | 155-166 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Ghana Zimbabwe |
| Subjects: | oral traditions literature Literature, Mass Media and the Press |
| About persons: | Ayi Kwei Armah (1939-) Yvonne Vera (1965-2005) |
| External link: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13696819908717847 |
| Abstract: | The often conscious conflation of the novel genre with other modes of historical narration from the oral traditions of Africa has resulted in experimental narratives which challenge the assumptions of historicism by reflecting reciprocal relations between history and fiction. This paper explores the problematics of this kind of experimentation through a framework of intertextuality, defined as the implicit and explicit connections between texts, forms, genres and discourses. It analyses in particular the dialogic relationship between written narrative and indigenous oral forms in two African novels - 'Two Thousand Seasons' (1973) by Ayi Kwei Armah (Ghana), and 'Nehanda' (1993) by Yvonne Vera (Zimbabwe). 'Nehanda' calls into question all the written narratives of Zimbabwe's first 'chimurenga' (war of liberation) by centring history on a female cultural figure and interposing women's oral recollections of legends and myths in a written narrative of history. In a similar way, 'Two Thousand Seasons' bears an implicit intertextuality with the European novel and with all of Armah's own earlier novels. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. |
